A couple of people forwarded me the following email, and I think it bears posting:I wanted to share the following with you:

About a year ago I heard a shiur in which reference was made to the Chofetz Chaim and Shmiras Halashon. The Baal Darshin mentioned the well-known fact that the Chofetz Chaim lost his hearing later in life and said "And he lived a very long life! According to the New York Times, he lived until 105!" The reference to this newspaper intrigued me - I was unsure if he was simply using the newspaper's name in jest or if the New York Times actually published an obituary for the Chofetz Chaim.

It crossed my mind again this Elul with the Chofetz Chaim's 73rd yohrtzeit. (The Chofetz Chaim Heritage Foundation hosted a brilliant nation-wide conference-call evening of shiurim. The participating rabbonim ranged in subject from Hilchos Shmiras Halashon to Inyonei D'Yoma to aprapos Elul mussar.)

My interest was piqued and I decided to visit the New York Public Library at 42nd Street, known for its vast research facilities: I wanted to see this obituary.

The search began with an alphabetical index of the NYT Obituaries in the Reference Department. I thought to look under "K" for Kagan. According to Artscroll and other American-based publications, The Chofetz Chaim is always refered to as Rabbi Yisroel Mayer Kagan. ('Kagan' being a derivative of 'Kohen' often used by Lithuanian and/or Polish jews). There was nothing under Kagan in the indicies, so I went to the Microfiche department in the back corner of the library's ground floor. I knew the civil date of death was Friday, September 15, 1933 (corresponding to the yiddish date: Elul 24, 5693) and searched the drawers of NYT microfiche for this date and the week that followed - how soon would a New York newspaper report on the death of a jewish rabbi in Radin?

Attached you will see my findings.

In addition to the feeling of accomplishment one feels in achieving a 'goal,' I was very inspired when reading the small article. I think it speaks volumes to see how a non-jewish publication in 1933 America reported in such a dignified fashion on the life of a eminent tzaddik and gadol ha'dor.

Enjoy!

I don't know who this originates from, but I like the idea; discovering the problem and doing the research and uncovering gold.

EDIT: I am pleased to be able to attribute this to Avigayil Meyer who notes that this research was hers and the email begun by her.

The research and letter above was done by ME! I sent the e-mail out to a couple of friends and now I see it all over the Internet without credit. Please post THIS response and spread worldwide. Credit should be given where credit is due!

In the introduction of many Artscroll products the following is written, or something similar:

Transliteration presents a problem in all works of this sort. Ashkenazi, pure Sephardi, current Israeli, and generally accepted scholarly useages frequently diverge, and such familiar names as Isaac, Jacob, and Moses differs from them all. We have adopted a cross between the Sephardi and Ashkenazi transliterations, using Sephardi vowel and Ashkenazi pronunciations. Thus: Akeidas Yitzchak, rather than Akeidat Izhak or Akeidas Yitzchok. True, this blend may require some adjustment on the part of many readers, but it has proven successful.

What is Ashkenazi? While in general Jewish Hebrew pronunciation can be broken down into three major families (West, East and Yemenite) there is such divergences within each of these major families that its difficult to understand what was meant by Ashkenazi. My best guess is that it means the non-Chassidic American yeshiva dialect which developed in the 20th century. As for pure Sephardi, that seems meant to be juxtaposed against current Israeli since, at least in the popular conception, Israeli Hebrew is basically identical to the way Hebrew was pronounced by Middle Eastern Jews, popularly called Sephardim. And what are Ashkenazi pronunciations? I am pretty sure they mean Ashkenazi consonants.

Anecdotally I have heard people claim that they've heard people read Hebrew, while serving as shliach tzibur for example, with Artscroll havara, pronunciation. It sounds unbelievable to me, but the truth is that Artscroll has enabled Jews and non-Jews who knew very little about Judaism to pick themselves up by their bootstraps and encounter many classical texts and interpretations. Since I do not dispute the testimony of those who say they've heard people read Hebrew as per Artscroll transliteration, it seems they learned through this method which "has proven successful."

I don't know what yardstick was used to prove that it is successful (sales?). But given that Artscroll didn't experiment with a variety of methods at the outset it seems that it was an editorial decision from the start (the explanatory paragraph notwithstanding, I don't believe Artscroll ever contemplated either using Izhak or Yiṣḥāq instead of something more like Yitzchok or Yitzchak). The only explanation I can think of is that Artscroll didn't want to disenfranchise an entire market, people for whom standard Hebrew is Israeli pronunciation or a Sephardic variety, and certainly they wouldn't disenfranchise their own base. Thus, the compromise.

The Artscroll invention of a new way to read Hebrew has been criticized, and on good grounds if it is indeed propagating an artificial literary Hebrew among people, both for not being true to its own purported goal of representing Jewish tradition (ie, hypocricy) and for the misdeed itself.

However it is interesting to note that where it really counts, Artscroll's line of transliterated siddurim, prayer books, they use an entirely different transliteration method, as depicted below (click to enlarge):

While I can't imagine that the above transliteration scheme is not confusing, both to layman and to scholar--they simply invented a transliteration scheme that is neither intuitive nor scholarly--it very nearly does reproduce what I have called the non-Chassidic American yeshiva dialect which developed in the 20th century. Not only are קמצין rendered with /o/, but even the חולם, rendered with an /o/ as well gets some kind of diacritic which either means that it is supposed to be pronounced /oy/ or as the long /o/ of 'home.' If the latter, then Artscroll has, for some reason, chosen to use the non-Chassidic American dialect which developed in the 20th century, but not the yeshiva dialect. It is the one used in many American day schools as well as in many American Beis Yaakov schools (incidentally, the phenomenon of the two ways to pronounce Hebrew as taught to brothers and sisters needs some exploration!).

Paranthetically, Stegnotes that "Whether they meant it too or not, Artscrollese is very similar to the Pre-Ashkenazic dialect." That statement needs some qualification, but it is indeed the case that the the proto-Ashkenazic pronunciation had some similarities to its Eastern sister dialect particularly in the area of vowels. It seems, from the evidence of early Ashkenazic manuscripts which confusingly mix qomatz and patahs liberally, like their Eastern counterparts, that the adoption of the Tiberian distinction between /o/ and /a/ came at a later stage.

Monday, October 23, 2006

It happened again. Sure enough, the hazzan in shul announced the coming of the new month in this way: ... ראש חודש חשוון יהיה ביום הראשון. I was half expecting it, actually. The issue? חשוון, rather than the actual name of the month, מרחשוון. And I bet many readers were expecting this post. :)

Put plainly, the issue concerns the 'fact' that the name of the eighth month on the Hebrew calendar is Marheshvan, while many people call it instead Heshvan or think that it is really two words, Mar Heshvan.

There are a lot of homiletics concerning the name of this month. Mar means drop, as in a drop of water. This month inaugurates the rainy season. Or mar means bitter. This month is bitter since it is the only month of the calendar without a special holiday of some sort. So mar, bitter, was added to the month. Or it is bitter because this was the month in which Jeroboam wages his rebellion, setting in motion the split between the Israelite and Judean kingdoms. Alternatively, the word mar was subtracted from the real name, marheshvan, because it means bitter Heshvan!

The names of the Hebrew months, as is well known, are of foreign, rather than indigenous Israelite, origin. In the Bible months are often simply called "first month" and so-forth. Sometimes names are given. For example, an alternate name for the first month is abhibh (Exodus 13:4). In the Tanakh, the second month is also called zibh (i Kings 6:1), &c. During the so-called First Exile the Jewish months assumed foreign names. This is best illustrated in the books Ezra and Esther, where the twelfth month is called adar (Ezra 6:15, Esther 3:7). Also named in Esther are the first month (no longer zibh, now called nisan, Esther 3:7) and the tenth month (now called tebheth, Esther 2:16). The names of these months come from the language we now call Akkadian.

The Akkadian names[1] were something like the following, in its order (with the Jewish months in their order next to them):

As you can see the lists are fairly close. In some cases most of the consonantal and vowel structure is the same (like Nisanu and Nisan). In one case the order is switched (the 10th and 11th months). In addition, there are some consonant shifts, more about that below.

This foreign origin was well known and never forgotten. Talmud Yerushalmi Rosh Ha-shana 1:2 says א"ר חנינה שמות חדשים עלו בידם מבבל, “the names of the months ascended with them [the returnees at the time of Ezra and Nehemiah] from Babylonia.”[3]

As can be plainly seen from the list, the consonants /m/ interchange with /b/ or /v/ (and those with /y/). Thus, Simanu becomes Sivan; Kislimu becomes Kislev. Talmudists or people who actually read Daniel (ch. 5:7) know that Hebrew argaman, ארגמן, purple, is Aramaic argavana, ארגוונא. Yeshiva schools are called yeshiva, ישיבה, or a mesivta, מתיבתא. (from Hebrew root ישב, to sit or Aramaic מתב, to sit). Another well known interchange is Hebrew Yavneh's Latin-English equivalent, Jamnia. As is probably clear by now, all these sounds are made with the same parts of the mouth , in this case the lips. I think Dave from Balashon once suggested pinching your nose and saying "Yabneh" out loud to hear your own mouth say what sounds more like "Yamneh."

In any case, it is clear that the month Marheshvan comes from the Akkadian Varahshamnu. What is that month's etymology? It seems that is is a compound of two words ורח שמנה, its Hebrew equivalent nothing more than ירח שמנה, the eighth month. There was a greatarticle in Jewish Action a few years ago by Rabbi Ari Z. Zivotofsky about this etymology. He speculates that the pronunciation of the Yemenite Jews, something like 'Mrahshwan,' as opposed to Marheshvan, might be more accurate in that its pronunciation preserves this compound or in some way reflect its real origin. And yes this entire post is really nothing more than a repost of something I posted last October 31. What merited its revisiting was, as I said, that the month was announced on Shabbos from the bima as the coming of Cheshvan.

Let me say now that, at least in matters of language, I lean more towards being a descriptivist rather than a prescriptivist. If many people say חשוון then it is a valid alternate of מרחשוון. Not only that, it is probable that מרחשוון is the minority. If anything, we מרחשוון people need to defend it as a valid alternate name! I'm not sure how much Google mirrors reality, but if you google חשוון and מרחשוון (or its defective variants חשון and מרחשון) it is clear that מרחשוון loses. Big time.

To illustrate this graphically, take the case of the eighth French month, Ao?t. It is pronounced simply as /oo/. It descends, as does our eighth English month, August, from the Latin AVGVSTVS. In Italian it is Agosto. Apparently the proto-French people, Latin speakers, slurred their words more than the proto-Italians; Latin speakers. From Augustus evolved Ao?t. But it exists today frozen in a spelling in which more than just /oo/ was pronounced. The word evolved in French pronunciation until all that is left is a mere /oo/.[3]

Who will deny that in French the eighth month is indeed spelled Ao?t and indeed pronounced /oo/? Therefore it is ultimately fallacious to deny that the ninth Jewish month is not called חשוון, or at least cannot be called חשוון. It certainly can be.

In any case, אַ!אַ גוטן חודשUpdate: The Jewish Worker notes that the Knesset will consider passing a bill to rename the month Cheshvan! You can't make this stuff up. Also noted by Jameel.

Update ii: R. Rich Wolpoe posted about this more than a month ago as well.

[1] Note that this is not nor is it intended to be a scientific transcription of the Akkadian names. See "The Fifth-Century Jewish Calendar at Elephantine" by S. H. Horn; L. H. Wood, Journal of Near Eastern Studies, Vol. 13, No. 1. (Jan., 1954), pp. 1-20.[2] This handy translation, as well as some good discussion of the issue is from B. Barry Levy's "Contemporary Jewish Booklore: The Exegetical and Editorial Work of Rabbi Meir Zlotowitz and Rabbi Nosson Scherman."[3]This handy example comes from Guy Deutscher's The Unfolding of Language: The Evolution of Mankind's Greatest Invention.

Friday, October 20, 2006

It has come to my attention that in the new Baltimore Jewish Times the following appears (no link at the moment):Just prior to World War II in Switzerland, a law was passed that required Jews to stun chickens via electric shock before shechting them. It became questionable if, when the current was put through the chicken to make it unconcious, the chicken could possibly be dead from the shock prior to the shechting, and this led to the question of whether a Jew should be concerned about this procedure.

The question was brought to the rabbis of the city, and the gedolim ruled that Jews could not use this method of electric shock, and therefore kosher chicken had to be imported from another source, France.

In the heat of the war, since Jews could not import meat, they had none.

There was one shochet, however, who relied on a das yachid that allowed him to shecht the chickens. But when he did, the rav the city came out against his doing so, and he said he would not be surprised if a grandchild of this man would be caught selling treife meat.

This shochet was the grandfather of Moshe Finkel, former owner of Monsey's Shevach Meats!

The above story is recorded in the sefer of responsa Chavatzeles HaSharon and was relayed to the Baltimore Jewish News by Rabbi Moshe Heinemann.

Now, putting aside that shechita was banned completely in Switzerland in 1897, the story doesn't ring true for other reasons. For one thing, in the version I had heard a few weeks ago (yes, this has been circulating for weeks) it was R. Chaim Oyzer Grodzenski who said the prophecy. I suppose the more responsible version is this one, which doesn't tie a name to the prophecy. For another, although it certainly is possible that some version of something resembling the above incident is in "the sefer of responsa Chavatzeles HaSharon," would it really name the butcher? If not, how is it known to connect an unnamed man in an unnamed incident (since this could not have happened in Switzerland around WWII) with the Butcher of Monsey's grandfather? It also seems unlikely that someone would have said he "would not be surprised if a grandchild of this man would be caught selling treife meat."

At the very least all these unlikelys require investigation and confirmation or debunking rather than unison nodding at the awe-inspiring story.

נראה לי, it seems to me, that there is some desire to root this scandal in an unseeable world of רוחניות, where a cough in a spiritual matter in 1940 mystically becomes a tidal wave in a spiritual matter in 2006.

I think I'm a little late, but here's an interesting excerpt from R. Daniel Sperber's Minhagei Yisrael (from the excerpts in the English version translated by R. Yaakov Elman). (click to enlarge, or download it as a more readable pdf)

Thursday, October 05, 2006

April 25: R. Yitzchok Adlerstein at Cross Currents writes a post called The Gospel of Judas and Jewish Faith, which is basically a lament directed at academic Jewish scholarship because "there are too many Jewish scholars and liberal clergy eager to betray their legacy for thirty shekels worth of academic respectability."

April 25: Noting that R. Adlerstein had once written "Alas, it has been a long time since Rav Dovid Tzvi Hoffman and his headlong charge against Higher Criticism and Jewish Wissenschaft , I responded with my own post, called חכמת ישראל : Eat the fruit, throw away the shell, basically an apologia for academic Jewish scholarship . The allusion in the title was to the justification Rabbi Meir used in learning Torah from arch-apostate Aher (BT Chag. 15b). I also pointed out then that R. David Zevi Hoffman not only did not charge against Jewish Wissenschaft, he was one of its founders! His Wissenschaft writings are identical in form and even in content to those of Zunz or Geiger. Indeed, R. David Zevi Hoffman's scholarship could quote Rashi in one line, Geiger in the next--just like any academic scholarship properly should. Yes, different motivations did exist. And ff course, R. David Zevi Hoffman did lead a serious charge against Higher Criticism of the Torah. This attitude was shared by Solomon Schechter and many, if not most Jewish scholars of the day who took little truck with what they rightly perceived as an attack on Jews.

October 5: R. Yitzchok Adlerstein at Cross Currents writes a post called Hadasim, Aravos, and Bar Kochba Coins which begins by noting that "some people – perhaps wisely – stayed away from disciplines considered hostile to traditional beliefs, some intrepid souls managed, in the words of the Gemara, to discard the shells and take the kernels." An exemplar would be Dr. Lawrence Schiffman.

I do not know if I made a רושם (an impression), but you never know. That kernels and shells thing is powerful, that I know and this second post is practically a reversal of the first.

October 5: My response is not to disagree with him, but to laud his point, which is my own point as well.

In fact, I agree that there are pitfalls of academic scholarship. There is pseudo-scholarship, just as there is pseudo-divrei Torah. There is an iconoclastic tendency which sometimes breaks things for the sake of breaking them.

Three brief examples will suffice. Two will not name names, but they concern oft-repeated tropes never carefully examined in violation of a cardinal principle of critical scholarship; the other will name one name since that person is no longer among the living.

The first concerns every single writer who cites the same tired trope about the Chasam Soyfer, who coined the slogan of the 19th century proto-haredi Orthodox: חדש אסור מן התורה, chodosh assur min ha-Torah. The last three words are easily translated; they mean "prohibited by the Torah." The first word means new as in "that which is new." So the phrase means "That which is new is prohibited by the Torah." However, a more elegent translation is "Innovation is prohibited by the Torah." This slogan was directed at modernity and especially at the spirit of Reform in Judaism. The absolute best translation I have ever seen is "Modernity is forbidden by the Torah." However, here is the rub: the Chasam Soyfer didn't coin the phrase. It is mishnaic and means something completely different (See, for example, Mishna massekhet 'Orla 3:9). In other words the Chasam Soyfer's slogan was creative wordplay. It is clear from the ways in which his slogan is cited that many, many of the scholars are simply unaware that it is a wordplay. Given that, the phrase is considerably less austere then it sounds. It isn't quite saying "Innovation is forbidden," for which one can laughingly respond "But didn't you install lightbulbs in your kloyz?" It may not be a phrase we can agree with, but it is witty (even if also frightening) but there is evidently a lot of unawareness of this fact. Scholars who repeat the trope, "Hatam Sofer=reactionary Orthodox=forbade anything new" are not being critical. A tiny bit of searching would reveal a new dimension to the phrase. Of course one can wonder if some of said scholars even know the phrase from the original Hebrew or only in translation?

Second example is another trope which is repeated constantly. Here I will be lax myself and neither quote the original nor even the exact wording. There is a remarkable aggadic passage repeated very often, which has God saying that he'd rather his children (ie, the Jews) forget HIM but keep his Torah, because observance will lead back to him. Many a devar Torah has been launched from this. This has been used to launch the idea that Judaism has no dogmas (which may be true anyway) to any number of other ideas. And it is repeated often. A very precise scholar who I will not name repeated it in one of his books. But it is wrong. Didn't the guy even look up the Yerushalmi? It says study my Torah, not keep my Torah. Why don't all the scholars who have cited in English this aggadah just quote it correctly? It doesn't necessarily even change the implications that much. The answer is because of imprecision and slacking off. (Hey, I didn't do my homework in this and maybe I'll get nailed myself!--try me)

Third concerns longtime editor of the Jewish Quarterly Review, Solomon Zeitlin a"h. Dr. Zeitlin was very concerned with pseudo-scholarship and wrote constantly about it. He found many faults with the 1972 edition of the masterful Encyclopedia Judaica and wrote much about it, even if he was right or wrong about the details. He was right and justified in polemicizing against pseudo-scholarship. And yet--he also spent 25 years chasing a rainbow in his treatment of the megillot midbar yehuda (the Dead Sea Scrolls). Simply put, he was convinced from the beginning, from their discovery, that they were not ancient. They were medieval. Maybe they were Karaitic, maybe not. But certainly they were not 2000 years old and more! It didn't matter what evidence was brought. Paleography. Theology. Nothing. And he was WRONG. They most certainly are that ancient. And he invested a lot of ink in his bad premise.

But--and I can't stress this enough--this applies to all intellectual endeavors, whether a daf yomi shiur or a 9th grade rebbe transmitting his mesorah to his charges. This is about precision, whole truths, accuracy, closer to the mark, more astute research, more truth. It isn't a pitfall to be found only in academia. I have heard as many boich sevaras in academia as I heard in the yeshiva. That sentence was a palindrome.